In today’s episode, we unpack seven hacks to improve mobile web design for churches.

Most of your browsing today is happening on a mobile device, so your website must be ready. 

But many of the church leaders we speak to aren’t sure how to make that happen. 

Join us as we discuss the ins and outs of mobile web design for churches. 

We hope this conversation helps your church reach more people and grow. 

Table of contents

• Ditch The Dropdowns
• Use Longer Pages
• Simplify Your Navigation
• Skip The Slider
• Compress Your Images
• Create A Mobile Menu
• Utilize AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages)
• Further Reading On Mobile Web Design For Churches

Dropdown menus were all the rage, but they just don’t cut it anymore with the rise of mobile browsing. On a mobile device, you can’t hover a mouse to access a menu the same way you can on a computer. Churches should avoid dropdowns at all costs. 

Rather than having deep dropdowns, churches should instead try to build longer, well-designed pages with all of the content you would have included in a dropdown. While we used to keep all the content above the fold, it now makes more sense to build social and news platforms with long-form content. 

Part of moving to longer pages will require you to simplify your site navigation. Ask yourself if you need every page you use to have on your site. Chances are you won’t. Another rule of thumb is that if you cant think of a call to action to go with a page; you probably don’t need that page. 

Page speed is vital for mobile devices. Users on mobile networks often don’t have the internet speed users have on computers. To help with load times, drop the large image sliders. They are notoriously clunky and take a lot of resources. 

Make sure that you are using the right size images on a mobile site. Smaller screens mean you can use smaller images. If you are using WordPress, We recommend using WPSmush. This helps with load times which in turn will help you appear on more google searches. 

In most cases, your navigation menu should be different on your computer and mobile church website. The menu for your mobile site only needs a few options, and you will want to use a pop-up menu commonly known as a Hamburger Nav. 

If you want a great mobile experience for your users, consider using an AMP or Accelerated Mobile Pages. AMP is a development technique to help mobile users get the fastest experience possible. If you are using WordPress, we recommend using the Official AMP plugin to make this change a snap. 

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